Meijer Sculpture Gardens

Title

Publisher

Date Created

Alternative Title or Name

Creator

Creator2

Creator Nationality

American

Work Type

Visual Works

Date

1999

Work Location

Michigan (state)

Grand Rapids (inhabited place)

Style/Period

Modern (style or period)

Subject

public sculpture

Description

View of bronze sculpture, "Cabin Creek" by Deborah Butterfield at the Meijer Sculpture Gardens in Grand Rapids, Michigan. "For the past decade, she has been making bronze work, cast from “stray, downed pieces of wood.” Butterfield carefully, intuitively, selects the branches and sticks which are used to "draw" her horses. "The lines of the branches do not simply outline the forms of horses, they create the contours through an accumulation of simple or energetic lines that seem to build up from within. This is three-dimensional gesture drawing, and the result is both skeletal and muscular." These models or “ghosts” (as the artist refers to them) are then cast, burning the wood away with molten bronze, creating one, unique sculpture to which she then methodically, expertly applies her patina"--Danese Corey Gallery website.